Another thing I'm not going to do...

For some number of years now, I have made Vision Boards around now about what I want in the year to come.  I’m not making one this year.

 

It’s not because I learned that putting anything fitness related on my vision board was asking for disaster.  (The year I wanted to ride another century on my bike was the year my forearms stopped working.  The year I put a tree pose on it was the year I got kicked out of yoga teacher training…)  It’s not because I didn’t meet most of my goals.  I did read nearly all of those books from my to-read shelf each year plus a bunch of extras.  I used up tons of leftover yarn and other craft supplies.  I wrote many many words in those empty journals depicted on past boards.

 

I still, of course, want to work out and read the out-of-control stack of books and make stuff.

 

What I don’t want is anything like more pressure.  I do not want anything that even smells like it might be like a goal.

 

I don’t hate goals.  I mean, I help people meet their goals as a job.  Goals are often useful.  I know eleventy billion techniques for setting and meeting them.

 

But right now, in my life, it needs to be about being and not doing.  It needs to be about the unexpected and the possible.  It needs to be about what feels right at the time.

 

No, I don’t mean that I am going to lie around in my crazy socks eating grapes and reading comic books while the house becomes buried in crumbs, my family runs out of clean underwear, and all the bathrooms have empty spools on the toilet paper holders with a full roll perched helpfully on top.  I’m not sure I could be that irresponsible if I tried.  I’m not going to stop making dinner or going to work or even reading difficult books to improve my brain.  I’m just not going to do it on an artificially imposed schedule.

 

I have a vision for next year that involves a lot more happiness and a lot less ticking of preordained boxes.  (No, I won’t give up ticking boxes, even if I have to write stuff on a list after I’ve done it.  It is one of my joys in life.)  I have a vision that I trust myself to grow at my own pace, in my own time.

 

If I decide that I need accountability (to whom?  I am a grown-up, damn it!), I can make a different kind of board, one that shows what I chose to spend my time on, what happens when I let myself dream in the moment instead of planning ahead all the time.

 

Whatever it is I do with the next year, I think it will surprise me.  I also hope it delights me.